Nothing From Nothing
by RebelFaerie
Summary: "He has been out these nine years, and away he shall again." Perhaps the only reason we fear and hate Lucifer is because he failed to seize the pen and write history himself. Edmund will not make this mistake. Relatively faithful to canon, with some flashbacks. Complete.
1. Prologue - Under The Dragon's Tail

Note

I've been on an odd and unstoppable Shakespeare fic kick lately, so it was only a matter of time before I set my sights on my tied-for-favorite character in the whole canon. This was meant to be a one-shot that sprawled into five parts: a prologue and four chapters. I'm not entirely confident in the weird formal things I'm trying here, but it was fun, and it allowed me to spend way more time than is advisable with Edmund.

Logistically speaking, I've taken some liberties with the play (small ones, but the English major in me feels obliged to excuse them). The historical sources used by Shakespeare place the action at some point in the mid-8th century, and trying to write that far back threw me for a dangerous loop and involved me spending more time on Wikipedia than was really necessary. I've nudged the setting forward slightly to somewhere between 1350 and 1550 (those two centuries being two of my most comfortable), leaning towards the latter half. Bear with me and pretend that _Lear _wasn't set in a pre-Christian context and that Henry VIII wasn't a thing.

Reviews and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

* * *

Prologue: Under the Dragon's Tail

_Fifteen Years Earlier_

I am in the tiltyard, and he looms over me like a carved stone giant. I recognize him immediately, though I have always been too terrified to speak to him: Caius, father's master-at-arms. Somehow, I am expected to speak to this hulking wall of a Northerner, eighty percent chest and shoulders with an accent thicker than the morning fog on the heath. And I a few weeks short of seven still, thin as a willow rod and about as useful. The man takes one look at me and laughs – I think at first he is barking at me, like a mastiff. "So you're the Earl's bastard, are you? I don't know what His Lordship means by it. A mite like you will never be broad enough to swing a sword. What's your name, bastard?"

"Edmund, sir."

"Well, Edmund the bastard" – the name sounds foreign when he says it, Eamonn instead of Edmund – "the sword, I think we agree, is out. Take up the bow. The bow doesn't care how small you are. My son could strike a deer from thirty yards by the time he was eight. "

"I'm six, sir."

"But you're the son of an earl as well. That has to count for something. The lord Edgar was a natural. First arrow, off like a shot. Go on, take it and try. Haply it runs in families."

If it did, it ran on the mother's side. My shot soars over the target and strikes the courtyard wall, where it turns away with the ping of flint against granite and bounces into the dust. I cringe and drop the bow without meaning to. This failing is more frightening than Caius, more terrifying than a full night spent alone in the darkened heath. It means Father's sharp displeasure instead of his usual indifference. I have become attuned to the difference.

Caius will not forgive this. He picks up the bow and shoves it back into my hands. I stumble back half a step, nearly overbalance.

"Listen, my little mongrel earl," he says, his face frighteningly close to mine, "you aren't allowed to give up so easily as that. You miss once, you draw another arrow and you try again. You miss them all, you go collect them and bring them back, and you try again. Do you know why? Because unlike your father and unlike your brother, fortune does not take her pleasure from smiling on you. If you want something, you have to take it. You rely on yourself, and what you can't do easily you work to. It's nature's way. You don't strive, no one will strive for you. Now. Again. We've hours before Master Edgar is apt to return for his lesson, and I've you and the target all to myself until he does."

Caius puts me through my paces until my arm screams with soreness and I've snapped the bowstring against my wrist until an ugly red welt rises and bruises. I practice and practice, make the same mistake so many times, that a scar will rise along my left forearm, a thin white ridge that will never fade. But the lesson, I know, will remain. The lesson that, whatever the stars say, however fortune may scowl and spit at me, perhaps I can win.

Perhaps I deserve to.


	2. The Pattern of All Patience

One: The Pattern of All Patience

Being a firstborn bastard would have been different. If you close your eyes and try hard enough, you can imagine something noble in it. Kings have had eldest sons that they acknowledged despite their bastardy. How much less of a fault does it seem in a western earldom no invader could be persuaded to take? But a younger son, from a father with a wife and an infant at home waiting. There is something unforgiveable about that. A constant reminder of a rift, a failing. Whether this is universal, I can't pretend to know. I have only myself for example.

Nine years is a long time without word. I don't know why I've been called back now, with a short, curtly worded message pressed into my hand by a messenger that could not read it. Few enough speak English in Rheims. I can't remember the last time I've spoken with someone my own age in my own language. I am now as good in French as in my father's tongue, for whatever good that will do me. Was that his goal, when I was sent away, proficiency of language? I doubt this.

This is nothing I should be thinking of now. The boat across the channel is in full sail, bringing me back on a cold wind toward home, toward England. Thinking of this will do nothing. _He called you back, did he not?_ I remind myself, glaring daggers at the slate-colored sea. _What does it matter how long it took him to write to you. He called you back. _But the memories are too bitter to allow for lies like this, lies like "what does it matter." My heading is set.

I let the memory take me, nine years' worth of consideration wrapped up in the images and sounds. The courtyard of my father's house. Autumn. I was only thirteen then.

It was afternoon, late afternoon, some time past when I was expected to begin my lessons in the yard with Caius, the master-at-arms. The reprieve was unexpected – Caius, as a divine edict more than as a rule, was never late. With my back against the stone wall, I tossed a stick for Vulcan to fetch. Father had made a present of Vulcan to me when I turned eleven, in an uncharacteristic flash of paternal duty. Now, I wonder if Edgar did not put him up to it. Give me the untrained, half-wild pup so he could keep his own snow-white bitch Viola to himself, and if mine bit me so much the better. But if that had been his plan, it had backfired, and the black pointer and I were now inseparable. I'd trained him well, from a mongrel that snapped at my hand every time I moved toward him to the point when he now slept in the crook of my hip during the winter, warming me better than any fire. I had just tossed the stick again, sending Vulcan bounding off joyfully after it, when I heard a voice from the yard's gate. A voice that did not belong to Caius.

"Edmund! There you are, Edmund!"

I stood carefully and turned. I saw it instantly, as I did every time without fail: the reason why my father would always and forever prefer my brother to me. Looking at Edgar crossing the yard toward me with a practice foil in one hand trailing along the dust, it was like seeing my father transposed backward in time. What looks he had inherited from the Duchess were subtle then, as if they waited for her body to settle into the grave before maturing into prominence, but in his boyhood he was a strong, sturdy youth with a head of thick light brown curls. I remember looking at his hazel eyes, his nose, so plainly our father's nose he might have borrowed it off his face, and coloring with a bitter jealousy I knew was stupid even as I could not help but feel it. If I had better resembled him, would I have pleased him better? I had seen everyone in the castle, for thirteen years I had seen them, and no one there looked like me. Father, when he spoke of me to visitors or guests, called me the castle's guardian raven, dark hair and sharp nose and brooding air. I was his omen, Edgar was his mirror. How could he not treasure this self in miniature, with only me as an alternative?

Whether I though this then, I do not know. My thoughts now are tangled up with my memories, and it becomes more and more difficult to undo the knot, to tell which feelings are a man's returned from nine years' unacknowledged exile and which are a boy's, watching his brother approach with a fencing foil and flick the harmless tip at the nose of a black pointer. It hardly matters. After all, little has changed. I am still myself.

"Your dog won't bite me, brother, will it?" Edgar watched Vulcan nip harmlessly at the blade like it was a particularly shiny stick.

"He only bites when I'm threatened." It was not an answer.

Edgar laughed – it was Father's too-loud, fearless laugh. "I'll be on my guard. Come on, Edmund, spar with me. Caius won't do it, says I need to be seen with someone my own size, to make it fair. Father says it's all right."

Edgar was a terrible liar. He had never learned the art of believing your own lies until you'd swear you spoke truth. I had. Father would never have given permission for me to duel his son, even with blunted blades. The risk was too great. If I beat Edgar, the dishonor would drown the family. Gods forbid I drew blood. And if Edgar beat me… That would not happen. I was not naturally gifted, but at practice I was as stubborn as Vulcan with a rabbit in his jaws, and I would not let go.

There was, however, that "to be seen" to contest with.

I looked back toward the gate. There was no one there, but a man peered over the rails of the gallery above. A hook-nosed man, with pale hair so fair it was almost silver. He was wrapped in furs against the October air, but his eye was sharp and lively, passing from one of us to the other. I had never seen him before, I knew that at once. Not that I was often introduced to gentlemen, at least for any length of time. When Father welcomed visitors, Edgar was formally presented and often as not asked to stay. I, on the other hand, was beckoned with a crooked finger, made to bow and listen to Father's stammered explanations, shamed apologies that evolved into light, unconcerned bawdy jokes the more used to it he grew.

But I was older now. And I would not leave. Edgar and I were after the same thing. One brother honored on the other brother's shame. It was nature's way, Caius would have said. The bear and the hound do not share the ring as friends, not when goaded as we had been. To prove himself to this visitor – a man from court? to get him a place serving in the king's household? – I was his sacrifice. But this sacrifice had motive of his own. I could not explain it then as I can now, but I wanted desperately and with a determination that frightened me to show the gentleman I could fight. And win.

"Hand me a foil, then."

Edgar grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. He did not see me flinch at his touch. I caught the foil he threw me by the hilt without blinking. Caius had been throwing sharp objects at me for years now; I was well used to it. Vulcan slunk to the far side of the yard as I pointed, but never took his eyes off me. Even if the blades had been sharp, I was in no fear for my life. I had trained Vulcan well. Outcasts the both of us, dark-coated runts of the litter, he would tear the throat out of any man that meant to hurt me.

I held the blade delicately, testing its weight, feeling the balance. Edgar had given me the worse, but I had never counted on anything else. We watched each other, nervous, tense, exhilarated. I could feel two pairs of eyes watching me from behind. Somehow, though I know better, I still feel as though that day they were watching _me_.

"On three, then, brother?" He was still smiling. It was no game to him, but he could still smile. Perhaps he was a better liar than I had thought.

"Half-brother."

The smile slipped.

"One… two…"

I struck.

He danced back, catching the offensive nearly on the hilt. Too slow. He was shaken but I pressed on, and my attack seemed to steady him. At last he not only parried but struck, not only stepped but lunged, still wearing that half smile that made his eyes shine. I felt my blood in my ears, the dust of the dry yard clouding my knees. My blade whipped toward his neck. He ducked. I spun back. He aimed for my chest. I blocked, pushed the blunted blade away, the reverse thrust, the check. Never had I wanted anything so badly as a touch. Never.

"Your feet, Edgar! Watch your feet! Move, my boy!"

The voice behind us rang with basilisk's eyes. _His voice._ My heart tripped, poised and ready to fall if pushed. Stunned, thwarted, I stuttered in my strike, faltered half an inch in my step. _His voice. Edgar, my son._

He was too good not to notice. He caught me, metal clashing against metal, the shout of my brother's voice. The sharp cold of a blade beneath my chin, the needle-thin pressure against my veins.

Edgar grinned again and held the blade level. "Killed you, brother."

I did not cry. Thirteen was years too old for crying. Edgar would have laughed in my face, called me "kitten" and mewed at the tears. I swallowed hard. The blade rippled with it against my throat.

"Luck," I said. "It was luck. You'd never do it again."

He laughed – he might as well have slapped me – and lowered the blade. "Practice first. We'll try again another time. I'll still win, of course."

"I could –"

The gentleman and my father had reached the yard and approached us. As always, I fell silent as if I had been struck for speaking.

"My Lord, allow me to congratulate you," the silver-haired man said, though he kept both eyes on Edgar and me. "You have two fine young swordsmen in your house. You must be very proud."

"Very proud indeed."

Edgar lowered his eyes, still glowing with pleasure. I looked straight ahead, half-present, barely there.

"It's been some years since I've seen you, Master Edgar. You've grown into quite the man. Quite the soldier. Do you remember me?"

"I'm afraid I don't, sir." Edgar, if he was anything, was honest. "Do you know my father?"

"I do, but it's not on his urging I came. I am the Duke of Albany, Master Edgar. His Majesty the King feels it has been too long since he has seen his godson. He has sent me from court to see whether you have grown into the kind of man that can make himself useful in his court. I think with some certainty I can tell him yes."

You would have thought from Edgar's expression he had just been told he would inherit the universe. He looked up from the ground beaming wide enough to break. What he had heard to surprise him, I have no idea. He was not the king's godson for nothing.

"Is it true, Father? Am I to go to court?"

"Only if you wish it."

A single, short laugh slipped from me, not loud enough to notice. Edgar wished it like a bird wished to fly.

"We will leave in five days' time, if that is amenable to Your Lordship."

At the duke's words, Edgar paused. His brow furrowed. I could not remember having seen him in thought like this before. Thoughtfulness was an air that did not suit him. (This is uncharitable. I know this. Let me have it.) He frowned, and looked at me. At _me_. I returned the gaze blankly. "What about Edmund? Will he come with me?"

Albany peered at me, missing the piece of the question that had sucked the jubilation from the air. "And you would be Edmund, then, my boy?"

I bowed. "Yes, sir."

"The Lord Edgar is fond of you, I see." As fond as you can be of a foil you keep to set yourself off. As fond as greyhounds are of curs. "You have served him well, I know, for him to love you so."

I closed my eyes tight and held the handle of the practice blade until I thought my palm would bleed. But as to what I was, that was for my father to define. He had grown good at it after all these years. By now, he barely flinched.

"The boy is not a servant, sir."

"Oh?"

"He's my brother," Edgar said staunchly. I could have hit him for it. It was so simple to him. He sounded like a toddling child insisting the sky was green.

Albany looked at me again, plainly noting how little I resembled the young lord, the King's godson. "Oh?" he said again. It was beginning to become a refrain with him.

"His breeding and education have been at my charge," Father consented. It was not the same, would never be the same as a _yes_. "He is a bright boy, very intelligent. Reading almost before he could walk. But Edgar knows the boy will not accompany him to court. Arrangements have been made to send him to Rheims at the end of the week. He has a place serving in the household of the Count of Ardennes."

The sword fell from my nerveless fingers into the dust. I looked in horror at Father, who kept his eyes on Albany and displayed no interest in meeting mine. Rheims? This was the first anyone had ever told me of Rheims. My place in the household had never been clearly defined, but I had believed it was certain. And now they were sending me away? Alone? To France? I read French, but I could not speak a word of it.

_A bastard cannot enter the household of a king. He ought not to remain in a country that knows him for who he is. A bastard cannot be seen by a king. A bastard cannot be seen. It is best for all of us. It is best for _me_._ Father was like a book in a language I had suddenly learned to read.

I closed my eyes, took a breath, felt the blankness of fresh snowfall sweep my face and voice clean. I was no longer there. I had nothing more to say. If they wanted me gone, I would oblige them long before I actually left. Leave it to them to cope with a ghost in my shape haunting their halls. I do this again now, close my eyes, turn away from the memory, welcome the glacial blankness that sweeps over everything and buries it under eight inches of powder. It has been nine years. I am a man now, not a child. It still stings.

"It is a great honor, Edmund. I hope that you will appreciate it for what it is worth."

A rook circled overhead, a black gash against the sky. If he wanted a tree for landing, he had chosen the wrong country. "I will do what you think best, My Lord." My voice was a hollow bone in the Gloucester crypt.

I was shameful. I was the scar of past mistakes that needed to be cauterized. I was to be sent away. Very well. So be it. Thirteen years looking for acknowledgment were thirteen years wasted. It would not have mattered had I beaten Edgar at the first pass. I would have been shipped away regardless.

No more. No more of that. No more building castles in the air when what I needed was a strong fortress on the ground.

I nodded and bowed and agreed as Father spoke on and on, not hearing a word. He and the duke, he and the duke and Edgar, turned away from me, speaking about preparations to be made for the king's godson to take his place at court. They had forgotten I was there. I did not mean to remind them. The whiteness I had bound up my mind in began to crack. I had to get away. As far away as I could.

I turned my back on the stone shadow of my father's house and ran. My legs stretched out into deer's strides, long and quick, jumping holes and leaping rocks, under the wings of rooks and kites. Vulcan bounded at my side, paws thundering, and we ran harder and faster than I had ever run before, one mile, then two. My heart raced but my breath was steady, my head clear and empty. I was flying, racing on the wind. No one could touch me. Not here. The heath surrounded me on all sides, my pounding heart and lungs at full sail, Vulcan and I the sole breaks on the flat, endless moor. On the heath, you could see forever. I ran until I could run no farther, until I scaled the steep angle of a granite stone jutting from the heath like a sentinel, the marker of the end of the castle lands, the beginning of the tenants' farms. Surrounded by nothing, absorbed by nothing, touched by nothing.

I did not cry. I felt no sadness. Then, I did not even feel anger. There is anger now, hot and bitter, a choking mouthful of it, a taste that will not disappear. I have learned more, since. As a child, I nursed hope as a bastard child of its own right, only to see it struck down, rebuffed, slapped away at every turn. But the anger is new. It grew with me in Rheims, matured and broadened and strengthened and sharpened, both its mind and its claws. At that time, I felt nothing but a burning determination, an incandescent elf-light through the mist, to need nothing less than family. I never had a mother. I needed no father or brother. I was what I was.

Natural and unadorned, alone and across the sea, I would make myself what I would be. What I am. My blood is half Gloucester, but my mind is mine.

The coast is approaching, a dark brown-green blur on the horizon that I know will lead me where I mean to go. The waves rush around me, beating memories against the hull of the ship with soft, unending slaps and breaks. Well, Edgar, I think, as sailors rush around me shouting and preparing to dock, I've returned. Will you give me that second chance, I wonder, now we've both had time to practice.

* * *

_Note - The amount of attention I pay to dogs in this chapter and elsewhere is thanks to a mental detour inspired by "The Bastard's Portion" by Sunfalling, which you should all go find on this site even though it is eight years old, because it is lovely._


	3. The Prince of Darkness is a Gentleman

Two: The Prince of Darkness is a Gentleman

Nine years has almost been long enough for me to forget the feel of the heath. Rheims is different, more different than seems to make sense for the journey it takes to reach it. The days are longer there, or night takes its time in coming. Shadows are gradual, stretched between walls and homes and fences and trees, gradations of brightness and shadow. Riding through the heath, it is light and it is light and then, suddenly, I can see nothing. All is dark for miles around, save a single watchfire pinpricking the horizon. Thank the gods I made it this close before nightfall. Had my father's house not been in sight I would have wandered blind, lost to some mire or the night wolves. A blind beggar without a stick. A fine homecoming to be sure.

The night watchman looks at me askance when I dismount and pound on the castle door. I cannot blame him – he is my age, not two years older. New, since my time. The poor nervous fool knows nothing of me.

"Your business, sir?"

My face is as unreadable as the black heath. "I mean to speak with His Lordship the Earl of Gloucester. I was sent for."

The watchman, pale and nervous in the shivering light, is unconvinced. "Sent for from where? And for what purpose?"

"From Rheims, from the court of Ardennes. I'll leave it to the Earl to decide the purpose."

If I thought the man was pale before. Apparently the stories of the dismissed bastard son had spread. I was not someone he wanted to keep waiting in the dark. It was odd, feeling like a specter or banshee called out of the shadow. Not altogether unpleasant. "Right, sir. If you would follow me, I'll bring you to His Lordship."

He gestures for another boy to lead off my horse, and I step into the house for the first time in full nine years. My footfalls echo loudly off the stone floors, bouncing around corners. How can it be so silent? It is late, but not the middle of the night. Perhaps they sleep early here, farther north. The entire household feels like it has been spirited away, and the watchman and I are the only two living creatures on Earth. But if I have forgotten much of the heath and the country, I have forgotten almost nothing about this house. Did I expect its vast, empty spaces to shift because at long last Father has written requesting my return? It is the same house that sneered at me as a boy. It has not changed, if I have.

The watchman gestures me into a parlor, where a roaring fire has been set and casts the room in a rich, gold-honey light. He bids me wait here, which I am content enough to do, and vanishes into the hall to summon up His Lordship. A faint rumble of thunder sounds from beyond the latticed window. I sigh and, exhausted, drop into a chair before the fire. Never again will I make the journey between Rheims and Gloucester with haste like this. Never at all, if I can manage it, but at the absolute worst never in one swoop. I fear I will fall asleep here in the chair from weariness, and Father will get exactly the welcome he deserves from me. Fighting against sleep, I slip out of my cloak, drape it across the back of the chair. But then a sound startles me. A wet, snuffling kind of whimper, but not of pain. Unexpected and weary, but bright with pleasure. My breath catches, and I rise.

"Ye gods." I crouch to the floor and whistle, a pitch I have not needed for years.

And there he comes. Grey around the ears, nose, and paws, walking with the halting gait of an old man who will never run again, but snow-dusted tail beating a frantic, happy rhythm. Vulcan approaches until we are nose to nose, and catching my smell for certain he barks merrily in my face and throws himself at me. He licks my hands, my face, as I hold him close. Ulysses could not have asked for a more loyal friend. Nine years and he comes when I call. He is old now, and I a boy no longer, but he was my friend. I have never met another like him.

"There, boy, there. There's a good boy. You remember me, do you? Did you miss me?"

"It didn't take him long to find you, did it?"

I look behind me, Vulcan still lapping away at my hand. Edgar, too, has grown taller. He is twenty-three now, and a man. I hardly know him, except by the soft hazel eyes and the smile that still seems too self-satisfied to be directed to me. But it is my brother, every inch the earl.

"He pined for weeks after you left. Father thought he wouldn't survive it, but he must have known you'd return."

I stand quickly and bow. I almost impress myself, how much scorn the movement can hold. "I appreciate the welcome, My Lord."

"None of that, Edmund, not to me. You're my brother. I'm glad you're back."

I straighten up, enjoying that I am still some three or four inches taller than Edgar. I can pretend to be glad to see him as well as he can pretend to be glad to see me. I'm pleased, somehow, that the years have taught him to lie. It evens the field between us. It's wearisome, pitting oneself against a self-proclaimed saint.

"So when I say I've come to see the Earl of Gloucester, that means you now, does it, brother?" I lean my hands on the back of the chair and watch him. It looks nonchalant, but it keeps the wood between him and me. He pours a glass of wine from the crystal carafe on the table, makes a gesture as if to offer me one. I refuse silently. He shrugs and drinks, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

"Temporarily. Father's alive and well, no need to worry about that."

"I wasn't."

Edgar chooses not to answer this. "He was called to court three days past. It appears the King is engaged in some important business and wanted Father's advice on the matter. He didn't expect you back for several days yet, I think."

No? He had hardly been unclear on the point, in his letter: _return as soon as you receive this message. I have urgent business I would discuss with you. _I thought this would hurt less without expectations. I was wrong. I scratch Vulcan behind the ears. His teeth are showing, a snarl I know to be a smile.

"Did he say why he called me back?"

Edgar shakes his head. "But we've had a room prepared for you upstairs. We weren't sure how long Father intends you to stay, but you should be comfortable there. And it looks as though that damned dog will go with you, whatever I say about it. I'm not sure I can separate the two of you."

He had the trick of an earl, however long Father had been away. My fingers itch to strike him for it. Listen to him giving me permission to stay in my father's house, to keep my own dog. _How gracious. You are too kind, my liege._

I smile at him. He never notices the false notes, the empty hollow behind. My brother has learned to lie, but he cannot keep his eyes open to see when others do. "One more question, brother. Caius, the master-at-arms. Is he well? I would like to see him tonight, if I could."

Edgar's brow furrows, as if he is struggling to remember, or find the easiest words. "Didn't you hear? The master-at-arms is dead. Caught the wrong end of an arrow four years past, five. It was a great loss to Father. Always said he was the best soldier he ever had. Best not mention it to him still. He has taken it hard."

I felt nothing. The blizzard swirled over my thoughts again. Sadness, loneliness, grief, they do not survive the cold. Anger does. Anger is a permanent flame. Nine years without a letter, without news, without from the looks of it a second thought. What else has happened that bastard Edmund could not need to know? What else have I lost? He breaks away from my eyes, for I am still staring at him with eyes quietly flaming but flaming hot. For him, now, only a vague twitch of guilt, nagging only while I stand in front of him and ask him questions he would rather not answer. For me it's something different.

He drinks again, considering the wine in his glass like a Sybil reading leaves. "You _are _welcome here, brother," he says, as if to convince himself. "Always."

"Thank you, brother."

My look does not change. He does not see it, but I do not need him to. His recognition is never something I have longed for.

I sit awake in bed late that night, Vulcan at my side breathing loudly. His snores are those of an old man, and he sleeps as soundly as any grey-bearded lord. One hand on his head, I brush my feet against the floor and watch the night spread beyond the window. The room is cold, drafty, and small, three floors up. I wonder who the last person to sleep here was. I wonder if they are still living. I watch the moon rise over the heath with its pale intruder's light, watch it catch every grey in Vulcan's coat. The land looks nothing like home, washed pale and meaningless in the moonlight. But then, it was never really home.

* * *

"Are you going to get up, brother, or do you mean to sleep until midday?"

Edgar's voice is bright, loud, scornfully pleasant. It is the last thing in the world that would entice me to leave my bed. I mumble something I have no intention of being understandable and drag the coverlet above my head, cocooning myself in warmth against the room's drafty air. If he wants me to leave this bed, after the journey Father put me through yesterday, he had better have a damned good reason for it.

The blanket is jerked from my hand and thrown back around my ankles. With a loud curse, I curl in onto myself, exposed, like a beetle poked with a stick. I'd be curious to see how alert he was in the morning after a week's traveling from France. Vulcan, to his eternal credit, growls at my brother and makes a halfhearted snap at his fingers as he reaches over my side to pet him, a trace of his old wildness flashing through.

"That dog's always hated me." I can hear Edgar's smile but have no desire to see it. "Get up, Edmund. You should leave within the hour, if you want to arrive in good time."

I snatch at the blanket, pulling it to my waist, and sit up. I know I look half-mad in the morning light; my hair juts out in all directions, and the last fragments of a dream still float around the edges of the room. Still, I know I caught the word "leave."

"Where am I meant to be going?"

"Father's called for you. He wants you with him at court by nightfall tomorrow."

Suddenly I am wide awake. "Me?" Under the circumstances, it is sufficient as a question.

"Well, strictly speaking he sent for _me_. But I can't afford to leave, not for one of Father's trifles. There is work to be done here. Anything he needs done there, you can do as well as I. I think he'll welcome the surprise."

_You never think at all, do you, brother. I can guarantee you this will not be a pleasant surprise. _And yet something about it feels right. The surprise of calling for a son to serve you at court, only to see the long-forgotten bastard appear straight-faced on your doorstep. Technically, what he's asked for. The dramatic coherence of the scene pleases me. Scratching the dog absentmindedly, I smile at Edgar, a gesture that seems to take him somewhat aback.

"I think you're right. Give me a few minutes to prepare. I'll be on the road before eleven."

"Ambitious," Edgar says with a grin, turning to go. "It's a quarter to. You sleep like the dead."


	4. This Great Stage of Fools

Note on this chapter and the following:

I'm breaking my own self-imposed rule against quoting direct dialogue in fics like this, for two reasons. One: because the whole reason for examining these scenes is to take them from Edmund's point of view, and so from a compositional standpoint I was more interested in what he was thinking about during the dialogue rather than what was actually said. Two: because these two scenes of dialogue (1.1 and 5.3, for those keeping score at home) make me so angry and conflicted and emotionally over-invested every time I read _Lear_ that I felt almost obligated to bring them in. It's a stylistic choice I'm not fully comfortable with, but know that I'm thinking about it.

Thinking about it too much? Probably. Anyway.

* * *

Three: This Great Stage of Fools

Never having been to court, I have to request one of Edgar's grooms to ride with me and show the way. Venturing into the heath without a guide is tantamount to suicide, with every mile holding a sinkhole or hidden marsh that would swallow me alive. Why anyone saw fit to erect a castle in the middle of this blasted wasteland I will never understand. Why generations of Gloucesters have not left is far easier to see. Land gains value through inheritance. Your fathers have held it, which makes it priceless. Earthen recognition, dirt-and-dust belonging. I wonder if Edgar has thought along these lines, or if it is a path tread only by those who will never inherit. Most philosophy is hypothetical. Most philosophers are second sons.

A few hours before nightfall, the groom points to the horizon. A stone structure looms ahead of us, tiny from this distance but with a presence large enough to dwarf me. So this is the King's court. Its very stones, as we approach, seem to look down on me disparagingly, questioning my very presence. Quite clearly I do not belong here. If the King throws me from the front gate and leaves me to walk back to Gloucester, I would not be at all surprised. I remind myself that this would not be a total loss. In either case, the look on Father's face when he learns that I have come will more than repay my trouble.

He goes to see to our horses, leaving me to approach the door alone. I feel like David approaching the Philistine having just remembered he's left his slingshot at home. I try the gates, with few expectations, and stunningly they are unlocked: I suppose in times of peace the King has little enough to fear from peasants or mad beggars of the field wandering through his doors. Or more likely he has simply forgotten. The King is old, older than Father, who is by no means in his prime of life. Dotage leads men to forget. (Is this treason or an eye to nature? I do not trouble myself with the difference.)

Before I've entered twenty paces into the wide vault-ceilinged hall (never had I thought my father's house small before now), an officious-looking servant in green livery has accosted me. I use "accosted" in a vague sense, for what he has really done is rounded a corner too quickly to taste of friendliness and stood directly in front of me, prohibiting my passage toward the castle's inner chambers. I look at his bearing, his arms clearly capable of holding a sword had he possessed one, and wonder whose bastard he is, and from what foreign court he has been exiled. I must make quite an impression here, a variation from the pattern of silken courtiers to which he is doubtless used. My black trousers and leather doublet give me rather the look of a highwayman, I noted it before I left, but I own no others that do not all but proclaim I come from Ardennes. An association I would rather the English court not make at once.

"What business have you with the King, sir?" the man demands. He distinctly hesitates over the "sir," and I do not correct him.

"I have no business with His Majesty. I was told the Earl of Gloucester could be found here. I… I bring a message for him," I finish, on a whim.

"I will see that the Earl receives any –"

"It is an intimate matter, you understand. A personal one. One I think he would prefer to keep from the court's ears." _And one that has come to court regardless._

The servant frowns, but as I have done so often in France, he dismisses his scruples with the recollection that he is not endowed with the ability to give a damn. "And by what name should I announce you, sir?"

I pause. "Tell him his son is here."

Plainly this man has met Edgar. Plainly he understands that I am not him. "And he will know you from this, sir?"

"Believe me," I say grimly, "he'll know."

He is gone in an instant, needing no encouragement to leave me to my own devices. Which, at the moment, consist of resting against the wall, one foot poised against the stone and arms folded over my chest, and waiting for what is to come. Will he receive me, I wonder, when he discovers how his call has been misinterpreted? A second thought occurs to me, with a more savage pleasure than the first. Can he afford to do anything else?

I've been waylaid, it seems, in one of the castle's outer halls. Not somewhere the King would likely do business – too plain, too bleached by the sun, not secure enough. High vaulted ceilings, lines of benches and tables and enough gold adorning both to finance any endeavor I can imagine for three decades. A dim light pierces through the high windows at the far end, a masterpiece of stained glass depicting what looks to be the coronation of the ancient kings of England, from Alfred the Great and forward, sweeping in William the Conqueror, Harold Godwinson limping behind in the mind's eye with an arrow jutting from his bloodied socket. I look at their ancient faces that sneer at me from their lofty perch, and can think of nothing but each separate figure shattering into thousands of pieces, raining from their frame to the ground in a shower of gemstones. Painted glass. False jewels. Worthless.

"I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall."

I freeze and stand up straighter. I do not recognize this voice. This is my first time within fifty miles of the court, so I am hardly like to. But I know the voice that answers.

"It did always seem so to us, I consent it. But listening to him now, and seeing the divisions he has marked across the kingdom, I confess myself at a loss to discover which party he prefers. The third portion, of course, now the richness of _that _is hardly a surprise – "

My father, deep in in conversation with a strong-featured, bearded gentleman of near fifty, has just entered the hall. He is dressed in his robes of state, all sable furs and hanging, well-polished chains suitable for a man of his position. They have entered from the upper gallery and are moving through to the gods only know what room. They have not yet noticed me; or if they have, they take me for some journeyman come to beg a favor of the great lords. I take a few steps away from the wall in their direction. Whether what I feel is like a man preparing to leap from a cliff or a bowman approaching his target on silent feet, I cannot yet tell.

Father catches sight of me at last. I can pinpoint the exact instant. He abruptly stops walking, in the middle of the room, and stares at me with the lidless roundness of an owl's eyes in the dark. I bow graciously. The bowman has won out; I keep my eyes locked on the target.

The lord eyes me first, then my father, then me again as I straighten to full height. He has heard the servant's announcement, and when looking without a legitimate comparison can see the family resemblance. "Is this not your son, my lord?" If he is looking for an easy explanation for why a father would look at his son like the ghost of a dead relative has appeared in a tattered, bloodied shroud, I would be more than happy to oblige him. Somehow the explanation behind the term "bastard" feels less sharp on my tongue than in my ears.

Father blinks several times and looks at me appraisingly, as if he is not wholly certain himself. Am I the same boy he sent away at thirteen? The letters we have not exchanged and the visits we have not made do nothing to help him judge. I take a slow breath and incline my head again. It is not forgiveness, it is not permission, it is not resignation, though it looks close to all of these. I am not resigned to this. I have no intention of resigning myself to it. But my memory is good. I know what has always followed that question, "Is this not your son, my lord?"

"His breeding, sir, has been at my charge. I have so often blushed to acknowledge him that now, I confess, I am rather brazed to it."

He claps me on the shoulder heartily, as if my bastardy is a joke we share, a wink and a nod, _you see it's all right, don't you, he knows his place._ He is close enough for me to see the scars of wrinkles that time has dug in Father's face, and to wish I had scratched them out myself with my fingernails. I close my eyes and reach again for the whiteness, the blank void that will carry me through to the opposite side. I feel nothing. I am not troubled, I hoped for nothing more.

I have always been a liar, whatever else.

The lord senses my humiliation, or the situation has made him uncomfortable on his own account. "I cannot conceive you, my lord."

"No, but his mother could." I can hear the wink. I will not look to see it. "I have a son, some year older than this, who though mine legitimately" – _and who I expected to see here,_ he does not hide his thoughts well – "I value no more nor less than this you see. Though this boy made a somewhat impolitic entrance into the world, yet was his mother fair, and there was good sport at _his_ making."

All attempts at summoning up the emptiness of sleep, closed eyes, the pale blinding light of staring directly into the sun, all shatters. Painted glass. Jewelry and lies. Underneath there is blackness. The black of a night on the heath, starless and thundering. The wind-tossed waves of the sea. Plunging down. Endless. Drowning.

"But what can I do? The whoreson must be acknowledged, of course."

He is still speaking. Ye gods, the old man is still speaking. The hope that his thoughtless idiot's cruelty would dissolve when I became a man, that fool's hope, that castle in the air I swore never again to build. That is gone. Edgar's imperious, patronizing, scathingly pleasant smile, a viper's smile. No surprise where he learned it. The old man kills with gracious favors he makes it known you don't deserve. The blackness, I am sure, looks the same to him as the frigid white emptiness, but it could not be more different. It does not blind me. It traps me here in place and forces me to feel each moment.

The lord, to his credit, seems at a loss for how to respond. "If it was a fault, my lord, I cannot wish it undone, the product of it being as I see."

He is grasping. He is a courtier doing what courtiers do, flattering both parties while holding one (one? both?) in contempt. I bow to him as well – _for whom, now, will I not bend my head when it suits me? _– realizing as he has realized that my father, who has not seen me once in nine years' time, who could not have been certain to this very moment whether I lived or died, has not spoken a word directly to me. The blank mask of politeness is in place. If he cannot see the whirlpool beneath that has sworn never to endure this again, he is enough a fool to deserve everything.

Why should I endure it? What right? What cause?

"Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund?"

The double strike. _Noble. Gentleman._

"No, my lord."

"My Lord the Earl of Kent, and my most honorable friend."

_Lord. Earl. Honorable. _No cause. No cause.

"My services to your lordship." I bow again.

The Devil was known to bow, from time to time. He refused to serve when the time was right and he saw the most to gain, not a moment before. And if he did not, it is for this reason we are told to fear Lucifer and worship the Lord. History is written by those with the strength and wit to pry the pen from the aging scribe's hands. I have traveled from my post in Ardennes, under the auspices of the count. I have seen the machinations of the Parisian king, pushing models of soldiers and battalions across a map with a stick long enough to keep a continent between him and them. I have seen the Venetians, the Florentines, the Genoese, and listened behind doors to men listening behind doors. My father thinks he knows enough to manipulate me into silence. He can shame me, he can disavow me all while keeping me close as a third arm, but he will never control me. I have seen too much.

The old man puts his hand on my shoulder again as I rise. "He has been out these nine years, in service to the Count of Ardennes, and away he shall again. I mean to find him a bride before the end of this year, someone appropriate to his station. Though my boy is only half of Gloucester, he is still full a man, and able to perform a man's office."

I am too surprised to register embarrassment. By Kent's color, he seems to feel enough on my behalf. Marriage. That is what was meant by all of this. Some fourth niece of a back-woods lord, nothing to her name but the lack of power needed to say no when presented with an earl's bastard. The insult of it burns – there are duchesses and marquesses from Cornwall to Cleves waiting in line for Edgar's hand, I heard talk of it even in Rheims – but it is not this that shocks me silent. Edgar would laugh for a month if he knew, and my father would speak of nothing else the season entire at court. But I have never been to bed with a woman.

It is not for lack of occasion. The French court is not renowned for its excess of temples to Diana, and enough gentlewomen saddled with old or impotent husbands have taken me by the color and whispered suggestions in my ear for me to comprehend that I am handsome enough. Perhaps no Adonis, but more so in any case than Edgar, four full inches shorter than I am and who, like Father, needs spectacles to read. It did not matter: the ladies of the court revolted me, treated me like a toy they could put on and cast aside when it pleased them, a well-cut diamond that should be honored to have been thrown on the ground by their hand.

But the brothels were worse. Every whore above thirty-five with dark eyes made my skin turn to termites – was she my mother? Had she known her? I know nothing of my mother. Impossible to say for certain. The thought of it has been enough to drive kings to gouge out their eyes before. And even the younger girls, girls bright and beautiful and dully waving me in with a yawn and a long, weary gulp of wine, in the face of them I faltered and ran. If I got her with child? If the only thing I inherited from the Earl was the knack for sowing a train of bastards in my wake?

And now I was to be thrown on the good graces of some nothing of a wife, some haggard bitter woman who was sure to loathe me in the same way I would loathe her, from mutual resentment and a sense of in some cosmic scheme of merit having deserved better. Was this the Earl's grand plan for me? Was this all I was fated to receive, affection filtered into begrudged sense of business-like duty? I thought illegitimacy would shield me from all customs of nobility. As it turns out, being a half-blooded bastard only strips away the pleasures that make the pain bearable. Every day, every day I am learning.

I say nothing, rolling with the shock as a sail-less ship arcs over waves. Before I have returned to the present, my father has taken me by the elbow and ushers me through the hall to the door they had been making for all along. Kent continues to hang back ever so slightly. The ancient kings watch as we pass, untouched, unperturbed.

The door leads to an inner hall, this windowless, shadowed, intimate. It is hardly cold outside these walls, but a fire dances in the stone hearth, and ensconced candles line the walls overhung with tapestries in the King's colors, scarlet and silver. I expected us to be alone, but we are apparently late. Thankfully, not so late as to enter after the King. His Majesty is not to be kept waiting. I have served only a count these nine years, but I know that much. Against the far wall, bracing his hands on the back of a chair in a manner I distinctly remember using with Edgar not long ago, is a hard-looking man with hooded eyes and a strong nose. I do not recognize him, but he stands some steps apart from a man I do. The pale, almost-silver hair (now running toward gray) of the Duke of Albany has stuck sharply in my memory.

But I cannot think of these men, nor hardly of the three women seated at the long wooden table who my mind identifies as the princesses, His Majesty's three daughters. I should bow to them, as my father does, and as does Kent. I should be more concerned that the lady I take to be Goneril (for though I should never dare tell her, her beauty is sharp and makes it clear she is the oldest) passes her eyes over me once, then again, more slowly. She is not looking at me. She is scenting me. Tasting me. Her eyes are a line that fights to drag me in. I am not stupid. I know what this means. But it does not, cannot matter. I was not born to be a temporary diversion for those grander than I. I will have love or nothing. Respect or nothing. Honor or nothing. Power, or nothing.

I am thinking too fast. My head is spinning. And yet my path has never seemed more clear. I meet the Lady Goneril's eyes – fair eyes, a honeyed amber, they are fine but do not suit her – in the way I have seen done. _A look made for you, My Lady, for I'd need to tear out my own eyes not to look. _She returns my effort, smiles from one side of her strict mouth, half nods in my direction. I bow from the shoulders. Our eyes do not break. Is it always so easy?

"Call up the lords of France and Burgundy."

My father, again, sending me away. Did he see what happened? The old lecher must be aware of the tricks, he knows the way these things are done. Has he realized that the King approaches, an audience I cannot be permitted to have? A bastard second son in the presence of His Majesty? I do not know, do not care to know, as I bow again.

Had Edgar known what came of his delegation of duty, he would have locked me in the castle and forbidden me to come. Had my father known, he would have seen me rot in France before he thought to beckon me back. But it is too late now. The wheel is turning. It is almost too easy. The mathematicians and philosophers claim that nothing can come from nothing, and true, I stand here with two hollow, empty hands. But they have not lived as I live. They do not know what I know. Something will come from nothing. And quickly.

I close the door behind me and venture through the castle, in search of the two noble lords.


	5. Half-Blooded Thing

Four: Half-Blooded Thing

_One Month Later_

I recognize him before anyone. I am watching a memory reversed and inverted, folded in on itself to examine its insides. The sun begins to set behind the shaky horizon, broken up with the silhouettes of bodies I cannot think of, not now. His shadow lengthens until it is now he who towers over me. In the failing light, he is darkened and obscured, but his sword flashes in a retreating sunbeam and I know. I will never forget that posture, that stride, that form.

Words are spoken between us, but as always they are empty and do not matter. He looks at me. Black and tall and shining, a commander, an earl, neither son nor father but fallen away from both. I look at him. A masked champion that cannot mask his steps, a wearied swordsman who must fight, and longs to fight, for a world that cannot return.

We watch each other, circling.

The Duke of Albany must remember this. He must feel, as I feel, a shiver of it ripple his spine. But he will say nothing. And I will not unmask the swordsman. Not when for the first time, the question is not whether I am worthy of him, but whether he is of me. The will of Heaven. Be it so.

I meet my challenger's eyes, and – I see his revulsion even as I do it, a revulsion I embrace as a delayed birthright – I smile.

_ On three, then, brother?_

The watching lords are unconcerned. I have won their war; let me forge my own path to death. The princesses (queens? Titles are slippery as soap bubbles blown by a child) have disappeared, or does one remain? Thoughts whirling. Breath catches.

He strikes.

Our feet and arms know every move in this dance. We break and merge without thought, without pause. I am the better swordsman. I have always been the better. My vision narrows. I can see nothing but his face, the face behind the mask, that lip curling into a scathing smile, the cruelty of silence and of permission. A fair fight, my dear legitimate. Father is not here to step in and take your part.

"_My Lord Gloucester, take my sister and leave us. The revenges we are bound to take on your father are not fit for you to witness."_

_ Cornwall's hooded eyes flash with the anticipation of a wolf stalking the woods. His eyes hold me and push me toward the door. The chair stands in the middle of the room, empty, inviting. I see my father standing there, as he was, close beard and hazel eyes turned to me, towering over me as a man to a child. A small black puppy is in his arms. He extends it to me. I reach out to take it and it snaps at my finger, snarling. He sees me jump back and smiles. Extends the dog again._

_ "Edmund. Farewell."_

_ I turn and leave._

My brother has gotten better. Or anger makes him wild and willing to expose his neck for a good angle. Qualities I am sure he never had or showed before. You see, brother, I have taught you something after all. The man with nothing has nothing to lose.

The day's battle was long and I stood at its head since daybreak, but I do not falter, feel no tiredness. Every pass sends new energy through me. What blood remains in my veins has gone to my head. You and me, brother, two sides of the same coin. One can only ever thrive by driving the other into the dirt. Flip the coin, watch it fall –

The sword catches me beneath the arm. I feel it sear across. Breastplate to hip, one fluid line. A woman screams. Hot dry earth reaches up to me. Or I fall to it. Blood. I feel it. I taste it. I hear it. Blood. It has always been about blood.

_His hands scrabble to the wound now yawning through his doublet, but they cannot hold back the flow. It seeps through his fingers, a child trying to cup water in her hands, a slow trickle back into the river. His eyes close, wrenched tight. A low moan slips unheeded into the dust. He does not hear his challenger proclaim himself. He does not need to._

Consciousness again. Here and gone. Edgar grips me from the front, drags me to my feet. He does not flinch when I scream. He pulls my face to meet his. Tilts my head backward, gripping a handful of my hair when I cannot look at him. He is speaking, but the blood rushes past in my ears and I cannot hear him.

"The gods are just. The dark and vicious place where he begot you cost him his eyes."

That, I hear.

I can hardly reply. My breath is short. I press against my wound with both hands but cannot hold myself together. Slaughtered like a boar grown wild. I have always been your sacrifice, brother.

_Edgar releases his grip, and the brother crumples to the ground, makes no attempt to catch himself. Kent and Albany press closer to hear, when Edgar's voice cracks and falls. He has a story that will be told, or burst the heart that keeps it dammed. The body rests where it falls, clinging, breathing raggedly, holding two sides of an unbreachable gulf together with hands slippery with blood._

The stars can be choked and blinded, but they cannot be moved. Blood on the trampled grass. Making something from nothing, to dissolve it in daylight.

At last, at last I am alone. The silent stone on the heath. The stars cannot be moved. Neither can stone.

They have come back to me. Someone takes me by the shoulder. They pull me up. I cannot tell who. The pain burrows deep, a hungry animal in my chest. What is he asking. What can they want from me. I am drained of everything.

"Where is the King? Where is Cordelia? Speak, half-blooded thing, speak!"

Half-blooded thing. Less than half, if you wait a moment.

_look, sir, i bleed_

The King? We are all kings, and earls, and fools, and nothing.

"The King!"

_i have seen drunkards do more than this in sport_

"Take my sword. The prison. Send in time."

_Edgar and Kent run through the stretching shadows, Kent catching up the blade, sharp but bloodless, clean since the battle. He is again alone, let fall into the dust. His breathing is shorter now, less sharp. A bubble of blood rises in his throat, seals it. Suffocation, drowning, all flooded. He coughs. Spits. Shudders. Coughs._

The King, the King. What does it matter, your king. All of us, beasts to be hung on a hook and drained dry. All of us banished. Some sooner than others. None returning.

_A captain bends to the earth. Two fingers against the exposed neck. Flattened palm against the chest, rising hot and slick with blood. A howl, in the distance._

The Captain: "Edmund is dead, my lord."

Albany: "That's but a trifle here."


End file.
